U.S. Growing Impatient With Iran

By

Gerald F. Seib

Updated Dec. 11, 2009 11:59 p.m. ET

Gen. James Jones has the ramrod-straight demeanor and no-frills speaking style befitting someone who once was the commandant of the Marine Corps. And so it is with matter-of-fact precision that President Barack Obama's national security adviser describes where things stand in the quest to walk back Iran's nuclear program.

"Iran still controls its destiny on this issue," he says in an interview in his West Wing office. The door to diplomatic discussion with the Iranians remains ajar, "but it's not going to stay open much longer."

If Iran doesn't show it's serious about addressing international concerns that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, the action will shift in January to imposing sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. The effort to pass a sanctions resolution will take perhaps a month. And steps to penalize Iran may not stop there.

That, then, is the road just ahead on the U.S. foreign-policy problem most likely to dominate 2010. Washington is obsessed right now with Afghanistan and the tortured process of deciding on a new dose of troops for that troubled land. But Iran is moving to the front burner, and soon.

The Obama administration has tried the diplomatic track with Iran that the president championed in last year's presidential campaign, by attending a high-profile October meeting in Geneva. That produced high drama, followed by great promise, followed by frustration.

The drama came when, just before the meeting, Mr. Obama and his British and French counterparts announced that Iran was building a secret uranium-enrichment facility, undisclosed to U.N. watchdogs. The promise came when, at the meeting, Iran promised to open that facility to inspectors and seemed to agree to ship more than half its low-enriched uranium abroad to be refined into fuel for a research reactor -- a step that would have removed a big chunk of Iran's potential bomb-making material.

ENLARGE

President Barack Obama, right, and National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones in Turkey in April. Gen. Jones says there is 'hope' that Turkey will move Washington's way on imposing sanctions on Iran.
Pete Souza/The White House

The frustration has come in the weeks since, as Tehran has backed away from that nuclear swap. It hasn't exactly said yes or no, and tried to offer alternatives. So the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors -- made up of 35 countries from around the world -- has formally censured Iran, which responded by declaring, with more bombast than realism, that it would build 10 more uranium-enrichment plants.

Meanwhile, Iran's internal woes intensified this week, when students and dissidents returned to Tehran's streets to protest the dubious summer election that gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. Iran's rulers appear both distracted and imperiled, and maybe not in a great position to make tough international decisions.

So now there is just uncertainty. Gen. Jones says the diplomatic track hasn't yet reached a dead end, nor the turn toward punitive measures made. The administration always intended that the door to diplomacy would "stay open as long as we could leave it open," he says. In reality, he adds, that means "the end of this calendar year, which is rapidly approaching."

Then the game shifts to sanctions -- and Mr. Obama proclaimed in his speech Thursday accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that "sanctions must exact a real price." The point of diplomacy and sanctions is the same, Gen. Jones says: "The goal very simply is to give Iran a chance, without sanctions or with sanctions, to give a clear statement of policy with regard to their future ambitions concerning the development of nuclear weapons and the delivery means to go with them. As long as there's an open question on both of those issues, then Iran is just asking the world to trust them. And Iran hasn't reached that status in the world where people will just trust them."

More bluntly, he says: "Our goal is to get 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium out of Iran." Perhaps, he acknowledges, Iran hasn't agreed to consummate the Geneva deal because, in the tradition of the Middle Eastern bazaar, it's simply bargaining until the last minute to get the best deal it can. Hence, Tehran suggested at one point that the world simply bring in the fuel rods before it lets go of any of its uranium.

So maybe an Iranian turn to the positive is still coming. "If Iran pivots and does the right thing, whether it's Dec. 30 or Jan. 20, that's what everybody wants," the general says.

But in any case, the American focus will be on sanctions next month, and Gen. Jones seems confident Russia and China are moving Washington's way on the subject.

Turkey, though, is a potential problem. Ankara is a traditional bridge between Iran and the West, and happens to hold a rotating seat right now on the U.N. Security Council. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Washington this week, and Mr. Obama asked him to "use his good offices to convey the seriousness of the situation to Iran," Gen. Jones says. Yet Mr. Erdogan made clear that he disapproved of sanctions.

Gen. Jones says merely that there's "hope" Turkey will come along.

A Security Council agreement on sanctions might be followed by tougher penalties arranged by the U.S. and its allies outside U.N. channels. Gen. Jones can only guess at the Iranians' attitude, but surmises: "They think they can withstand anything the U.N. or the coalition of like-minded nations can put together. They might be right. They might be wrong."

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